Sudan oil refinery where the newly-emerging oil-rich central African state has been under fire from U.S. imperialism for years. The leadership of the country is being hounded by the ICC which it is not a party to the Rome Statute., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
Sudan admits to taking S.Sudan oil
Published: 1:31PM Monday January 16, 2012 Source: Reuters
Thousands flee Sudan to escape bloodshed
Sudan military helicopter crashes, killing six
Sudan said it has started confiscating some oil exports from South Sudan that it believes it is owed to meet unpaid transit fees but will not shut down a pipeline carrying the southern state's oil.
South Sudan became independent in July under a 2005 peace deal with Khartoum that ended decades of civil war in which 2 million people died, but the two sides have failed to sort out a long list of disputes.
The biggest conflict is over oil revenues - the lifeline of both economies. Land-locked South Sudan has two thirds of the former unified Sudan's oil output but needs to pay fees to use northern export facilities.
The two countries have failed to agree on a transit fee but will resume on Tuesday talks sponsored by the African Union in Ethiopia. Previous rounds ended with the parties wide apart.
Sudan has started confiscating southern oil to compensate for Juba's failure to pay a fee to use Khartoum's pipeline and the Red Sea port of Port Sudan, members of the northern delegation for the talks in Addis Ababa said.
South Sudan pumps around 350,000 barrels per day (bpd), officials have said. Sudan produces 115,000 bpd in its remaining fields but needs it for domestic consumption.
"Since early December we've started taking part of our share after the southern government refused to agree on a deal for a transit fee," Saber Mohammed Hassan, a member of the delegation, told reporters.
He said Khartoum was now demanding a pipeline fee of NZ$45 a barrel, up from an initial demand of NZ$40. Analysts have said Sudan's demands were 10 times in excess of international norms usually based on a per-mile basis.
Delegation member Zubair Ahmed Hassan added Khartoum was taking some southern oil to use for northern refineries but gave no volumes.
South Sudan has accused Khartoum of blocking oil exports of 3.4 million barrels in Port Sudan and asking foreign oil firms to divert some oil to refineries in Khartoum and El-Obeid.
In a second demand, Khartoum wants Juba to pay a total of NZ$1.26 billion for transit fees since July, said deputy central bank governor Badr el-Din Mahmoud, another delegate.
He said South Sudan also owed Khartoum another NZ$7.56 billion in debt. "The South has sent us a letter demanding $5 billion (NZ$6.3 billion) but this amount is not correct. We actually demand from the South $6 billion (NZ$7.56 billion)," he said.
Sudan's government is under pressure to overcome a severe economic crisis after losing the southern oil, which made up 90% of the country's exports. It generated NZ$7.94 billion in oil revenues in 2010.
"The national economy cannot do without oil," said Idris Mohamed Abdul-Qadir, head of Khartoum's delegation.
South Sudan has refused to shoulder Sudan's foreign debt pile of almost NZ$50.44 billion, which has been a burden for the economy for many years in addition to a U.S. trade embargo deterring most Western firms.
No compromise in sight
South Sudan has accused Khartoum of "stealing" its oil exports at the northern port of Port Sudan by ordering its security services to oversee the loading of 650,000 barrels of southern oil worth NZ$81.9 million on a Sudanese tanker.
"The government of Sudan has chosen to steal this oil in broad daylight just days before its own proposed commercial oil negotiations with the Republic of South Sudan," South Sudan's oil minister Stephen Dhieu Dau said in a statement on Saturday.
He said the oil pipeline would be closed within days since storage capacity was filling up in Port Sudan but Azhari Abdalla, director-general of Sudan's Oil Exploration and Production Administration, dismissed this.
"What I can confirm from our side is we will not close any line. It will stay open. You can take this for granted," he told Reuters.
South Sudan's top negotiator Pagan Amum said on Sunday oil companies had sent a letter to Khartoum verifying that South Sudan has paid for the use of oil infrastructure in Sudan since July.
"This letter makes it clear that the government of Sudan has no basis to demand any payment from the government of South Sudan because it has been paying and we cannot pay twice," Amum told reporters in the southern capital Juba.
But northern delegate Zubair said since Sudan owned the pipeline it needed to be paid directly by Juba, not via companies.
Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, a London-based Sudan analyst at consultancy Control Risks, said differences between north and south were "irreconcilable."
"Without an agreement the two countries remain engaged in a stand-off in which unilateral decisions lead to new political realities ... on the ground. The risks of a gradual descent into renewed all-out conflict are real," he said in a note.
South Sudan accuses Sudan of stealing 120,000 barrels of oil a day; talks open in Ethiopia
By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, January 17, 9:44 AM
JUBA, South Sudan — South Sudan’s oil minister on Tuesday accused northern neighbor Sudan of stealing massive amounts of the south’s oil, an accusation that comes the same day the two sides are to begin another round of negotiations over their formerly unified oil industry.
South Sudan’s Minister of Petroleum and Mining Stephen Dhieu Dau told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Sudan is each day diverting about 120,000 barrels of oil pumped from the south through a recently constructed “tie-in” pipeline.
“This amounts to nearly 75 percent of the oil of South Sudan” being pumped through the line, Dau said.
South Sudan broke away from Sudan in July to become the world’s newest country, and took about three-fourths of what had been Sudan’s 500,000-barrel-a-day oil industry with it.
Oil runs both countries’ economies, and the south’s oil must run through Sudan’s pipelines to get to port. But the two sides are nowhere near a deal on how to share revenues.
Dau’s accusation comes just days after the government of Sudan announced that it was taking southern oil in lieu of pipeline transit fees it says the south is not paying. Oil officials in Khartoum said they began taking southern oil in December, but would not specify how much oil was being taken.
Dau said the seizures at Port Sudan coupled with the oil taken from the new pipeline amounted to nearly all of South Sudan’s shares of oil pumped from its territory.
“This is a crime and it is a threat to peace and security,” said Dau.
The two countries were to begin negotiations on Tuesday in Ethiopia primarily over the transit fees that South Sudan will pay to use the northern pipelines. South Sudan has offered to pay an average of $0.70 per barrel for the use of the two pipelines, but Khartoum has asked for $36 per barrel.
Khartoum’s chief negotiator Sabir Mohammed Al-Hassan said Sunday the figure includes other fees that South Sudan will be required to pay, such as transportation fees, a transit fee, and a marine terminal fee.
But South Sudanese officials say the levies amount to theft. Dau warned that the south would take legal action against any foreign oil companies caught buying “the stolen oil.”
Pagan Amum, the secretary general of South Sudan’s ruling party, said on the sidelines of scheduled oil talks in Ethiopia that the theft of billions of dollars worth of oil by Sudan would probably cause the talks to collapse.
“Sudan should take note that the south’s patience is close to reaching its expiration period,” Amum said.
Amum said that Sudan is stealing oil “that would be the equivalent of purchasing two new pipelines a year, every year.” Amum said an oil company on Monday alerted the south’s government of another 750,000 stolen barrels worth $140 million.
Amum said the north has repeatedly threatened oil companies to load southern oil into its vessels. Copies of letters that backed these claims were distributed to journalists at a news conference.
Despite the difficulties, South Sudan is trying to expand its oil industry. Last week it signed its first post-independence oil deals with the state petroleum companies of China, India and Malaysia for oil-producing concessions in Unity and Upper Nile states. The agreements replaced exploration and production agreements made previously with the government of Sudan.
___
Associated Press reporter Luc van Kemenade in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia contributed to this report.
No comments:
Post a Comment